NFL Draft: 10 worst No. 1 overall picks

While other players like John Elway, Eli Manning, Jim Kelly, and Bo Jackson have spurned the teams that ended up drafting them, refusing to play for the clubs but still finding success in the NFL, Ohio State linebacker Tom Cousineau wasn’t so lucky in 1979 when the Buffalo Bills took him No. 1 overall.

Cousineau never played a snap of football for the Bills. Buffalo had acquired the No. 1 overall pick in the 1979 NFL Draft from the San Francisco 49ers in exchange for running back O.J. Simpson. The problem with selecting Cousineau by the Bills was that the Canadian Football League’s Montreal Alouettes were willing to pay twice what the Buffalo would offer him.

He would star with Montreal in the CFL, but when he wanted to give the NFL a try in 1982, Buffalo still retained his rights. It was apparent that Cousineau didn’t want to play for the Bills, so Buffalo traded him to the Browns for what became the 1983 No. 14 overall pick. That same pick was used to draft Kelly out of Miami, who too in turn spurned the Bills and signed with the USFL’s Houston Gamblers.

Cousineau would play in the NFL for six years with the Browns and later the 49ers before retiring in 1987. Kelly would eventually play for the Bills in 1986 and led Buffalo to four straight Super Bowls, all ending in losses. Looking back on it going on 40 years later, apparently no elite player wanted to play in Buffalo. The Simpson to Cousineau to Kelly trade chain best epitomizes how NFL talent viewed the Bills organization at that time.

Next: 2. Ki-Jana Carter, Cincinnati Bengals, 1995